John Boehner & The Borgias Of Butler County: A Poisoning Plot

There was a theory that President Zachary Taylor was poisoned to death with arsenic, ostensibly because Taylor was opposed to extending slavery into the western territories. Alas, they dug him up and he pretty much died from a lifetime of bad nutritional habits and (perhaps) unpasteurized iced milk and raw cherries. (Thus is Zachary Taylor one of the most prominent victims of deregulation in our nation's history.) As a very young nation, we missed the golden days of poisoning your way to power that are so much a part of European history. Also, it appears that Americans have no native gift for it anyway.

Among the reasons driving the alleged assassination plot: Michael Hoyt heard voices that told him Boehner was evil. He thought the Ohio Republican was the devil. He blamed Boehner for the Ebola outbreak. And he thought the speaker was mean to him. Asked about the threats Wednesday, Boehner turned away from television cameras and said: "Can't make this stuff up." The 44-year-old Butler County, Ohio, man was indicted last week on charges that he planned to murder Boehner -- a plan that he made after being fired from the Wetherington Golf & Country Club in West Chester.

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I don't mean to make light of this. Well, I do, but just a little.

"Hoyt told the officer he was Jesus Christ and he was going to kill Boehner because Boehner was mean to him at the country club and because Boehner is responsible for Ebola," United States Capitol Police Special Agent Christopher Desrosiers reported. "Hoyt advised he had a loaded Beretta .380 automatic and he was going to shoot Boehner and take off." Police said Hoyt also emailed Boehner's wife, Debbie, twice. "If I had any intention of hurting Mr. Boehner, I could have poisoned his wine at Wetherington many, many times," police said he wrote in one of his emails.

OK, the part about Boehner's wife is creepy. However, if there were ever going to be a news story that included the words, "John Boehner," "poisoned," and "country club bar," I thought it also would include the explanation that Sonny Jurgensen, the old quarterback, used to use on bleary Sunday mornings -- namely, that he'd been poisoned by a bad ice cube the night before.